On Leicester: “First of all good morning to my friends from the media and I think it is difficult to retain the title, history says.

“Not many teams can retain title, one of the teams was United, another one was some team managed from the worst manager in history.”

“Leicester are very good, they are a very easy team to analyse+ understand, their attacking organisation is difficult to cope with.

“They are easy to understand, difficult to play against.”

On title aspirations

“I always said since day 1 that my title ambitions were motivational factors,I don’t believe you can be at this club+say different.

“Many teams have years of stability through years with the same manager or years with same players or a lot of investment.

“We know already who will be the champion in Germany, France, Scotland, in Spain it is one of two.

“In England every team plays to win every game, any team can win any game.”

When asked if he was irritated by criticism of him over recent weeks:

“I am not upset with anything, I am such a lucky guy that I can’t be upset with anything.

“The only thing that upsets me is the criticism to my players, my players are my players, I should protect them.

“I can’t protect my players from you [the media], it is a feeling of frustration. With the Einsteins is fine, they need money.”

Hitting out at the media again the United boss said: “I am a good man, I am a man of good will, I do a lot of charity so why not feed the Einsteins as well.”

On Rooney

“Rooney form is Man United form, we are a team, we are not Wayne Rooney.

“We like to say a very good start to the season was better than we could expect, we were guilty to raise expectations of people.

“We were punished by the fact we only played well for moments, in football you have to be consistent during 90 minutes.”

When asked about criticising his players: “It’s a learning process, you make a mistake, especially individual mistakes then you have to learn.

“A team that works to a game plan during the week, you try to identify agreements between us and then individual mistake punishes you.

“Criticism is part of the process, it helps them learn how to deal with criticism from you (the media).”